Here Are 16 "Bridgerton" Season 1 Details You Need To Remember Before Binging Season 2
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🚨 Major spoilers for Season 1 of Bridgerton ahead! 🚨
Consider us hot and bothered because Season 2 of Bridgerton is heading straight on over to Netflix on March 25.
Netflix / Via giphy.com
The new season follows the tumultuous love life of Anthony Bridgerton, the eldest Bridgerton who's set on finding a worthy viscountess. Enter Kate Sharma, whose family just moved from Bombay to London.
Netflix / Via giphy.com
Anthony has his eyes set on Kate’s sister Edwina, but Kate is protective of her sister and loathes Anthony for being a rake who thinks way too highly of himself.
Naturally, Anthony and Kate fall in love. But things are complicated.
Season 2’s focus will entirely shift away from Simon and Daphne’s romantic exploits, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can scrap Season 1 altogether. It’s pretty important for understanding the setup and context of what will happen next.
Netflix / Via giphy.com
Given that Bridgerton first hit Netflix on Christmas Day 2020, it’s been a minute since it debuted. If your memory of the bodice-ripping escapades is fuzzy, you’re not alone. Ahead, dear reader, we present the most crucial details to remember from Season 1.
1.The entirety of Season 1, based on Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I, takes place in London during the Regency Era in the early 1800s.
Episode 1 kicks off social season in London, when all the parties take place and it’s officially marriage market time.
2.Right at the start of the show, Daphne gets deemed a "diamond of the first water"— she even gets a kiss of approval from the Queen.
Translation: she's the "it girl" of the social season.
3.The show is narrated by Lady Whistledown (Julie Andrews), the mysterious Regency Era gossip writer who knows everything about everyone.
4.Reeling back to Episode 1, Violet Bridgerton wants her elder children, especially her oldest son and daughter (Anthony and Daphne, respectively), to get it together now that their father is gone.
She does believe in marrying for love, though, and she and Lady Danbury are keen on playing matchmaking with Daphne and Simon.
5.Meanwhile, the younger Bridgertons are kind of just doing their own thing.
Benedict is gallivanting about in fine art society. Colin’s crushing on Marina, the Featherington cousin who is low-key pregnant throughout the entirety of the first season. Eloise doesn’t care for marriage or high society; she wants to be independent.
We don’t really know much about the younger kids: Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth. But don’t worry, because the tentative plan is that each of the future seasons will probably focus on a Bridgerton child, as far as executive producer Shonda Rhimes is concerned.
6.After getting harassed by Nigel Berbrooke at a party in Episode 1, Daphne strikes a fake romance with Simon, Anthony’s old school friend. The plan is to make Simon seem off-limits and Daphne seem even more desirable.
But as we see in Episode 2, Anthony is against this because he knows that Simon is a total rake.
7.In Episode 3, Queen Charlotte sets Daphne up with her nephew Friedrich, who’s the Prince of Prussia. (BTW, that’s Cormac McLaggen from Harry Potter.)
Charming and loaded, he’s a strong contender for a husband, but Daphne catches feelings for Simon.
8.Meanwhile, Anthony spends most of the season lovesick over a performer named Siena Rosso, who he’s been hooking up with in secret. Their relationship is pretty on and off.
Unfortunately, Siena, an opera singer, doesn’t really fit into Anthony’s upper crust world. Anthony initially breaks things off with her in the first episode to focus on his duties but gets very jealous when she proposes a sexual favor for Simon. (Which doesn’t happen.) In Episode 3, Anthony wants to rekindle their romance, but Siena’s fed up by his empty promises.
9.After Anthony catches Daphne and Simon making out, he challenges Simon to a duel (lol) in Episode 4.
Anthony declares that unless Simon agrees to marry Daphne, the former friends will duel to the death. Simon doesn’t agree initially. However, just before they kill each other, Daphne interjects and decides that she and Simon will marry even though he insists that he can’t give her what she wants most: children.
Side note: Anthony also hooks up with Siena before the duel thinking that he'd either die or be forced to flee the country.
10.After getting married in Episode 5, Daphne and Simon go at it like rabbits but their honeymoon phase doesn’t last that long.
Simon really does not want kids because he had a terrible relationship with his neglectful and abusive father, who mocked him for his stutter among other things after his mother’s death.
11.In Episode 6, there’s a particularly disturbing bedroom scene that takes place after Daphne learns about how children are made.
Essentially, Daphne prevents Simon from pulling out in an attempt to conceive —despite him not wanting children. Their relationship is pretty much fractured from this point on, as both parties feel betrayed.
12.Daphne and Simon are on the rocks for a while, realizing that they both want different things. In Episode 7, Simon promises that he'll stay if she's pregnant but he'll only be married to her in name if she's not — Daphne then gets her period.
13.But the couple reconciles in Episode 8 after Daphne finds Simon's letters to his father and declares her love for him. At the very end of the season, they welcome a baby.
14.Anthony and Siena break it off for good after he asks her to go to the ball with him but she asks him to let her go.
15.Penelope Featherington becomes a major character.
Penelope Featherington, Eloise Bridgerton’s BFF, is revealed to be the enigmatic Lady Whistledown. While writing up a storm with her quill, Penelope also faces some pretty brutal family matters: Her father has been murdered after rigging a fight. Meanwhile, her cousin Marina leaves the Featheringtons after learning that her lover is dead, deciding to marry his brother Sir Phillip for a secure future.
16.And to lead us into season two, Anthony declares his intentions to find a suitable viscountess after Siena kicks him to the curb.
